


Listen and repeat

by Shinosuke



Series: The Raven Cycle - Alternate Universes, because I can [3]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Adam is not at Aglionby, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Borderline Adam/Gansey, Deaf Character, Disabled Character, Gansey is pretty and Adam is very aware of that, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-04
Updated: 2018-11-02
Packaged: 2019-04-18 09:05:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14209806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shinosuke/pseuds/Shinosuke
Summary: A soulmate AU in which you hear your soulmate's voice in your head, so you know when they're talking to you.Also an AU in which Adam looses his hearing in both ears."From the day he was born, the voice inside his head, the voice reading his thoughts out loud, trying them for the first time, wasn’t his own. He had just accepted this as a given, another boy’s voice in his head, different than the one in his mouth, it must have been how he sounded to the world instead of just himself. It wasn’t until his mother had told him about the soulmates, that he realized what it truly meant."





	1. Adam

**Author's Note:**

> I'm trying to handle Adam being deaf as good as I can and don't mean to offend anyone with it. If any of you have personal experience to share about it and things I can improve, it's well appreciated.
> 
> Also, I meant this to be a short one-shot, now it's a two-shot. Happens xD I just wanted to write a tragic soulmate AU. After chapter two I'll continue my other fics. I eve started the next chapter of the Hunger Games AU. It's not abandoned!
> 
> Please yell at me over this AU, I'd like to hear your thoughts!

„Hey, watch it, Trailer-boy!” Adam bowed down to pick up the mostly empty lunch-bag he had been carrying prior to bumping into a fellow student he had never met before. In his head, he repeated the words to himself, trying to convey the same disdainful, angry tone. It wasn’t always easy, convincing himself to be mean, when he wanted nothing more than feeling allowed to be kind to himself, but it had gotten easier and it had become a habit for him. Repeating the first words of a stranger in his head, with the same intonation they had used, to get the most comparable data.

 _“Hey, watch it, Trailer-boy!”_ The voices didn’t match. Adam exhaled, glad.

From the day he was born, the voice inside his head, the voice reading his thoughts out loud, trying them for the first time, wasn’t his own. He had just accepted this as a given, another boy’s voice in his head, different than the one in his mouth, it must have been how he sounded to the world instead of just himself. It wasn’t until his mother had told him about the soulmates, that he realized what it truly meant.

“Some people, ya know, they’re lucky to share their voices with someone else.”, she had told him. “They hear the voice of their destined partner in their heads, not their own. It’s a bond you can’t shake. It’s a promise.”  
“So you hear dad’s voice in your head?”, little Adam had asked, curious and not yet terrified enough of the idea of hearing his father’s voice in his head, voicing all his thoughts.  
“Some people.”, his mother repeated with a flat, empty voice. “But you don’t need no soulmate to marry.”  
Adam had been wondering if his mother had a soulmate. If she had, then he had wondered, why she was not out there looking for him. Didn’t she know how?  
“Mom...? How can I find him?”  
“Him?”, his mother had repeated.  
“Yes, the boy in my head.” His mother had looked at him like she had missed the last bus on her way home after a very long, very shitty day.  
“Don’t tell anyone about him. Never. This must be your secret.”

And he hadn’t told anyone. He had quietly listened and had repeated what strangers said to him, to hear if any of their voices matched. None had, not even close enough so he would repeat anything else in his head. He knew he had time. When his father’s temper had become worse, he had started to hit Adam. Once. Or Twice. Then more frequently. And harder. It had become a habit and escaping this had become a priority to Adam, more important than finding his soulmate. He would work his way out, leave all this behind and when he finally met his soulmate, he would already be free, because he didn’t need a soulmate to make him happy and fulfilled. He wanted to be both and then share it with the boy he heard in his head. He wanted him to be proud, because it would mean that he himself would be proud.

When Adam turned 15, he received an acceptance letter from the very expensive, very prestigious, very posh Aglionby Academy, that he had applied to without his father’s consent. It was his best chance for an Ivy League school, his best chance of getting out and he had worked hard to take it. Unfortunately, he wasn’t the one to open the letter and read it first. He was in town at work, so he could pay off the student fees that weren’t covered by the partial scholarship he had applied for and when he came home, his father had been in a rage like never before. A rage that turned him into a brutal force of nature, warning everyone not to be reckoned with.  
Adam had only fragments of memories of that evening, when he came home. He knew he had been yelled at. He knew that he had been denied entrance to their shared trailer. He knew he had ended up on the ground and he knew that his head had hurt like hell when he had woken up still on the ground the next day.

He also knew that his father’s furious voice would be the last he’d ever have heard outside of his head, but he had only learned this later.

It had been a set-back, to say the least. In all of his plans: Aglionby, his jobs, getting out as soon as possible… And his soulmate. How was he supposed to find someone’s voice when he couldn’t hear? How was he supposed to be heard when he didn’t speak? At first he had tried. Talking to his parents, to his boss, to a doctor, but it was hard to decide on a volume and the words felt wrong in his mouth, when his ears didn’t give the feedback of him having said them correctly or having said them at all. His parents got annoyed of his always inappropriate volume, whether it was too loud or not loud enough, it was always wrong and his parents made a point of being disappointed of him with every word he tried to say.

One evening, his father had had enough. He had shoved Adam into the small kitchen counter, hard enough to make the whole trailer shake. Adam had ducked behind his arms, trying to shield himself from a blow that never came, while his father wrote something down on the newspaper he had finished earlier. “ _Take it as a sign to never talk back at me again! Can’t do it properly, then don’t do it at all!”_ He shoved the paper against Adam’s chest and stormed off. Adam didn’t even have to force the voice in his head to sound angry.

So he became quiet. And with the quiet, came the isolation. People at school started avoiding him, because holding a conversation by writing everything down was exhausting and slow and the kids in his class didn’t know him well enough to muster up this kind of patience. His determined studies, the decided secrecy of his homelife and the fact that parents in Henrietta usually didn’t want their children to get a bad influence from the trailer trash kids had left Adam with very few friends to begin with, so it wasn’t a great loss per se, but a noticeable one nevertheless. Mountain View High was not particularly equipped for students with any kind of special needs, but it was the only education he was going to get and at least, the teachers tried. They handed him protocols for their lessons, allowed him to answer everything in written form, spared him from oral tests and presentations.

He was also lucky enough that one of their teachers was fluent in sign language and was already teaching it in an extra-curricular group. She took to him and helped him practice after school, even outside of the group meetings. It didn’t take him long -he had always been a fast and diligent learner- to at least pick up the basic spelling and he constantly added new gestures to his vocabulary, eager to improve, even though there weren’t many other people he could talk to in his social environment. At least it would show the teacher that her patience was paying off. A small gesture of gratitude, that Adam wanted to show her.

Boyd didn’t know sign language. He couldn’t tell the difference between the gestures Adam practiced on his breaks and the chinese hand seals his teenage daughter picked up on that Asian cartoons she always watched, but Boyd had always been very fond of Adam. He was hard-working and had a quick and good understanding of cars, so he kept Adam among his four employees. He talked to him via paper and pen and had him stick to the tasks around the cars so he wouldn’t have to communicate with the costumers.

It was the knowledge he had gained at Boyd’s garage, that made him stop on the way back home, when he passed a bright orange Camaro, parked on the side of the road, the hood popped open, a boy in an Aglionby school-uniform bent over it.

He parked his bike and pulled out the little notepad he was always carrying in his pocket to write down “ _Hi, I’m Adam. Do you need help with your car?_ ”. When he looked up, the boy was already looking at him. Talking to him. His appearance, no longer hidden behind the car’s hood, took Adam aback for a moment. He had recognized the school uniform right away, but if wealth had a face, it was the one he saw right before him. Perfectly swift brown hair, a symmetrical, fair face and under his uniform, the silhouette of an athlete.

Adam handed him the notepad and when the boy’s confused eyes met his again, he pointed to his ear and shortly shook his head. He saw realization dawn on his face and then the boy started talking again.

It had been two years now since Adam’s world had turned silent and when his signing had come along quite well, he had started learning lip-reading. Blue, a girl he had met in the group after school, helped him practice, mouthing words for him, but it was difficult and Adam didn’t pick up anything else than that he seemingly had made the boy in front of him a little nervous somehow, followed up by what looked like an embarrassed apology.

Adam handed him his pen, so he could write something down. When he did this, he did not expect an essay. Instead of just holding the notepad firmly enough so he could write mid-air, the boy put it down on his car’s roof and started writing. It took long enough for someone Adam had not noticed before, to roll down the passenger side window and stick his shaved head out. The two strangers exchanged something, the one standing outside gestured towards Adam and the one sitting inside looked over to him. Pale blue eyes gave him an analyzing once-over, before vanishing inside the car again. The window rolled back up and Adam immediately felt smaller. Looked down on. He was facing two boys in the money-scented uniforms of the most expensive school in their area, standing next to his old bike, wearing plaid jeans and a grey t-shirt, ripped and stained from work.

The boy handed him what he had written and Adam saw all their differences mirrored in his messy two sentences next to a neat paragraph from the Aglionby-boy.

 _“My name is Gansey.”_ , Adam read out loud in his head. _“I didn’t mean to offend you by talking, I couldn’t help myself; it won’t happen again. I would really appreciate your help with the Pig (my car), it made a cacophony of noises before it just died mid-drive. It is old and acts out more than I would like it to, but it is worth the trouble. I would be glad if you could take a look at it. Not that I want to assume anything, but you look like you know your way around cars.”_ That must have been when the shaved head had appeared next to him. _“This young lad goes by the name of Ronan Lynch and appears to not be in the mood to introduce himself. Thank you for your help.”_

Usually, people tended to keep it short and simple on paper, to save time and effort. Talking to this guy must be a real task, Adam thought, even though he liked the way Gansey’s words sounded in his head. Together with the polished looks before him and the polite, yet vaguely offensive, phrasing, the deep edge he sometimes heard was smoothed over, making the voice sound powerful and well-contained. It suited Gansey, but in two years, Adam had had a few encounters of “The voices could fit”. It was no use to guess, he would need the other to judge, so he would have to talk…

If only this wouldn’t feel so weird after he had started out by writing. If only he wouldn’t feel so small next to him, that he didn’t also want to feel inhibited more than he had to. Talking to Blue had started out the same, even if it had become easier over time, but talking to a stranger always brought him back to that newspaper pinned to his chest. 

It didn’t take Adam long to fix the car, even though he assured Gansey -in a slightly more controlled handwriting- that he needed to get it to an actual auto shop to get it fixed up. Gansey seemed genuinely enchanted by how effortlessly Adam had made his beloved car cooperate again. “ _I want to treat you to dinner. We were heading to Nino’s diner anyway. I would be honored if you could spare the time._ ”, he wrote. Adam lifted his hands in a universal, hesitant gesture to decline, Gansey pressed his palms together like he was praying and Adam saw the word “Please” form on his lips.

He checked his watch and wrote back: “ _I have until 6.”_. Gansey smiled contently and nodded towards Adam’s bike, then pointed at the trunk of “The Pig”. While he popped it open, Adam pushed his bike over and together they lifted it into the trunk. Gansey caught Adam’s apologetic look when one of the tires smeared mud on Gansey’s brand-new-looking uniform. He just smiled and waved it off like it didn’t matter. Adam couldn’t figure out whether it was the school or the money he didn’t care about, both woke a sharp feeling of responsibility and envy in him, that didn’t leave when he slid into the backseat of the magnificent Camaro. The boys in the front seats exchanged a few words, from what Adam understood, Ronan wasn’t happy with the situation, but turned away when he caught Adam staring at his lips to read them.

Nino’s diner was filled with Raven Boys, like it usually was. Ronan immediately turned towards a booth where a pale boy with wild blonde hair already waited for them. Adam took a look around, taking in the smell of greasy pizza and burned burgers. In between the vibrant colors of a cheesy 80’s nostalgia-diner and a lot of dark blue sweaters, he spotted someone surprisingly familiar.

“Blue?”, he asked out loud, not sure if she could hear him. So many boys in so little confined space must have been deafening. Gansey turned to him, a question on his lips, but it died the second he realized that Adam hadn’t taken his eyes of the waitress he had been addressing. Adam figured it would probably be one of three possible options:

  1. “You know her?”
  2. “You can talk?”
  3. “I just heard your voice, are you my soulmate?”



One question was easily answered by the way Adam still looked at Blue, when she turned around, looked at him and started signing. Another was obviously already answered when he had said her name and the third one, he would ask again, so Adam didn’t bother.

Gansey tapped him on the arm lightly to get his attention, then signaled he would go over to Ronan and their friend to wait for him. Adam nodded and turned back to a now very skeptical Blue.

“You’re here with _them_?” She made a face during signing, emphasizing the disgust on “ _them_ ”.

“I fixed his car, he invited me and didn’t accept a no.”, he signed back. “You never told me you work here.”

She rolled her eyes. “I don’t like it.”

Adam looked down at his clothes and pulled on his shirt for a moment, his face spelling “Oh yeah? Tell me about it.”, when he looked back up.

“You better not make _them_ wait. I don’t think they like it.”, she signed with a mean smile.

“They will get used to it. You’re their waitress.” Blue fetched a dirty paper napkin from the table she was in the middle of cleaning and tossed it at him, before flipping him off. This had always been her favorite sign.  
Adam grinned and went to go sit with _them_ , putting his notepad and pen on the table before they could ask.

To his surprise, the blonde new guy greeted him in sign-language. “Hi, Adam. Ronan told me about what happened. I’m Noah, nice to meet you!” His mouth moved quickly while he signed, he spoke the words out loud for his friends to hear, Adam guessed. Both of them looked as surprised as he was, to see their friend sign.

Gansey said something next to Adam, Ronan’s shoulders lifted and sank down again like he sighed. Noah shrugged. “I had a deaf cousin that I used to be very close to. I haven’t signed in years. I might be a little rusty.”, he explained, both with his hands and his mouth. Adam wanted to smile at him, thankful for letting him be a part of the conversation, but it didn’t feel appropriate. He looked from him to Gansey and Ronan, because he felt like he didn’t know him long enough to ask about his presumably dead cousin. Luckily, Gansey apparently did.

“I told you what happened. I died.”

Adam looked at him confused, not sure if he had seen correctly. Ronan shook his head, Gansey didn’t really react at all to that rather dark answer and Noah didn’t seem eager to elaborate.

Adam’s eyes went back to him. “You’re friends with cute waiter-girl?” Ronan rolled his eyes, Gansey turned to look at her, probably to check if she actually was cute.

“Yes. I know her from school. Why?”

Noah hesitated and thought about his answer for as long as it took Blue to get to their table.

She asked the group what she could get them out loud and asked Adam “What do you want, traitor?” with her hands before pulling out her notepad. Noah chuckled and Blue raised an eyebrow, so he fell obediently silent again. She looked satisfied. Ronan started to order, Gansey only stared at her. Noah looked down on the table and started rubbing over a small, ancient-looking stain. When Ronan was done, Blue turned to Gansey. “Well?”, she asked and Gansey swallowed visibly.

Adam couldn’t see Gansey’s mouth when he started talking, but whatever he said, Blue’s eyes went wide and she looked slightly panicked. It obviously took her some effort to look away from Gansey and shoot Adam a helpless look.

“Voice.”, she signed and finally, Adam understood.

Gansey started talking again. Blue declined whatever he offered, which was probably more talking. Adam saw her say something about “working” and then furiously asking “What?!”. He almost flinched at the violent tendencies the voice in his own head provided while he witnessed the whole scene. Their voices matched, so whatever small hope he had had for Gansey being his match, disappeared. It was probably for the best, they obviously came from different worlds, but Adam had liked the idea. His words had sounded kind in his head, his voice warm and soft, it could have easily fit together.

Noah looked up and tapped on Adam’s arm. “Could you say something? Gansey is going down. He is not good with … words.”, he signed and nodded towards the two. Adam noticed how several heads around them had turned, watching closely. Adam cleared his throat, which only got him Ronan’s half-hearted attention. Blue didn’t even look up, so he reached past Gansey for her arm.

“What?!”, she automatically spat, but she took a deep breath when she realized who’s hand it was. They both had been so deep in their conversation that they looked pretty disoriented when Adam interrupted.

“You should talk about this when you have the time.”, he signed. “In private.” He made a small nod towards the table next to them, where the boys didn’t even act like they hadn’t been staring when Blue looked over to them.

Blue let her head fall back, a few stray hairs fought their way out of her short ponytail, while she exhaled long and with her eyes closed.

She turned towards Gansey again and said a few words for which Noah patted Adam on the shoulder, it felt like a compliment. Gansey answered, Blue started writing again. Adam wrote his order directly on her notepad, because he didn’t know how to sign “Pizza Margherita” without spelling it and because Blue had tossed him pen and paper before he could even start.

When she left, even Adam could feel the silence between them. Noah looked at the stain again, Ronan had shifted his attention from Adam back to Gansey and Gansey looked everywhere but the direction into which Blue had vanished. Still, he was the first to speak again and Adam was a little impressed. Noah looked up and nodded. “Yes, I can translate for you.”, he said and signed simultaneously.

Adam moved a little away from Gansey, turning more towards him, but as soon as he started speaking, he looked at Noah. “How do you know so much about cars?” Noah looked at Gansey like he would look into a camera during a tv-show. His eyebrows asked “Seriously?”, Ronan said something and Gansey seemed confused. Adam hesitated.

“I work as a mechanic.”, he then signed, which Noah translated. “I just came from work when I saw your car.” Noah added something afterwards, Ronan shook his head, Gansey looked guilty, but that didn’t keep him from talking.

“Do you not-“ Noah stopped mid-sentence and stared at Gansey. He asked something that could have been if he was really sure and it started a small discussion that Adam couldn’t quite follow. Ronan grabbed pen and paper and slipped it over to Adam so he could read “ _Dick wants to know if you’re a hs-dropout”_ in his deliberately awful handwriting. Adam raised an eyebrow and looked at Gansey, visibly annoyed by that question.

Gansey apparently tried to apologize, but his mouth moved to fast for Adam to understand even the smallest bit of it, so he turned to Noah, who shook his head fondly and started signing. “He didn’t mean that." He nodded towards Ronan. “This –“ then a sign, that Adam didn’t understand “here is a little grumpy and rusty with people. Gansey was surprised that you were done with work when we just came from school. He sometimes is not aware that not everyone here goes to Aglionby.” Instead of spelling the school’s name, Noah merely touched the symbol on his uniform’s sweater.

Adam looked over to Gansey who still had a wildly apologetic look on his face and slowly nodded. “I go to school at Mountain View. Aglionby –“ Adam did spell the name “isn’t accessible for me anymore.”

There was a confused look. “You went before you lost your hearing?”, Noah translated Gansey’s question. Adam swallowed and shook his head.

“I wanted to. I applied for a scholarship.”

There was another small discussion that Noah didn’t translate. Finally, Gansey wrote something under Ronan’s line. “ _May I ask, what happened? I don’t want to intrude, I just want to get to know you.”_

Adam looked at Noah, who now was the one looking apologetic. “I had an accident.”, Adam signed and Noah repeated out loud. That was all he would say about it. It was a shitty lie, but he was not about to tell them what happened behind the closed door of the hellhole he called home.

“You all go there?”, he asked to change the conversation away from him. Ronan rolled his eyes hard enough for Adam to worry about if it hurt, Gansey nodded.

“Some of us more frequently then others.”, Noah signed with a well-timed wink at the end. “Ronan is trying his best to be a rebel.” He still spoke out during signing, so Ronan shot him a murderous look that didn’t phase Noah in the slightest.

From there on, the conversation got more pleasant. They talked about school, about Adam’s job and about the magnificent monster of a car Gansey possessed. They ate and Noah continued to translate what he, Gansey and sometimes even Ronan said. He got a little more socially compatible with his mouth full of pizza and Adam discovered, that he actually had a pretty good time with them. He caught Blue looking over to him once, checking if he needed rescue from the rich boys, and looking over to Gansey a few times more. She hated the Aglionby students as much as every other Henrietta citizen, maybe even more and now she had found her soulmate among them. It seemed to upset her, but she looked curious nevertheless.

Noah nodded towards Gansey, who had failed to get Adam’s attention before he started talking, and signed: “Would you like to visit us tomorrow? If you have the time.” to Adam. It didn’t come out no-where, but still took Adam by surprise. Other than Blue, there usually were no people that invited him over.

“To do what?”, he asked in return. Yes, he did have the time, it was his day off, but he wasn’t sure if it was a good idea to get further involved with the three Raven Boys. They didn’t match and he was sure that at least Ronan, maybe Noah understood that. He believed Gansey genuinely wasn’t aware of it at this point.

When said princeling heard Noah’s translation of his question, he put on a bright, wild smile. It felt different than what he had seen before, unmasked, untamed. It sparked Adam’s interest and made him feel a pang of regret that Gansey was not the one meant to be with him.

Gansey exchanged a brief look with his friends, the reactions couldn’t be more different. Noah chuckled and shook his head fondly, Ronan rolled his eyes and let his head fall back, his chest rose and fell with a deep, long sigh, while Gansey wrote something down. Apparently, he didn’t want Adam to get this question second-handedly. Literally. He passed him the notepad, the excited smile made his hazel eyes shine with purpose.

“ _What do you know about Welsh Kings?”_


	2. Ronan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ronan has a hard time getting used to the addition(s) to their little group of three, but what else is new?

Gansey didn’t usually have a lot of guests over at Monmouth and Ronan was more than fine with that. He didn’t like … people and there usually were two kinds of Gansey-guests: Very few handpicked Aglionby-students who were either on the rowing-team or were assigned a project with Gansey, or Gansey’s “colleagues”. Typically incredibly ancient men that made Ronan fear the day when one of them died in their home. He didn’t even want to imagine the possibility of living with a ghost that Gansey would call a “colleague”.

Lately, there had been a new kind of guests, that Ronan didn’t approve of. Gansey’s tiny, angry soulmate Blue and Adam Parrish. The latter usually didn’t talk to Ronan, because Ronan didn’t know sign-language and was rarely in the mood to read and write, but was admittedly pleasant to look at. Noah had pointed this out to him once, adding that Parrish therefor was exactly Ronan’s type. Ronan had punched him.

Blue on the other hand was exactly not his type, but at least she was someone with edges almost as sharp as his own and it was even fun bantering with her from time to time. She wasn’t intimidated by him, wasn’t shy to voice her many complaints about Gansey’s quirks and he was kind of inclined to not be absolutely compelled by her presence. On top of that all watching her and Gansey dance around each other, getting to know each other -him trying his best not to offend her, her trying her best to be offended by _everything_ \- was sometimes actually worth the time. Those two and their soulbond were a hilarious joke of the universe that Ronan could genuinely laugh about.

Today, Ronan wasn’t in the mood for company. His dreams had been a fucking capital m Mess™ last night and he couldn’t bear anything beyond the real Gansey or the quiet Noah right now. Music was a reliable companion, a solid wall between him and his mind the way it was blaring from his headphones, probably damaging his ears rather sooner than later, but at least muting his thoughts for now. He wanted to go for a drive, but it wasn’t nearly late enough for the streets to be as empty as he needed them to be, so he stayed in his room, busying himself sorting through the music collection on his computer until he finally had to leave his room to hunt some food in their multifunctional kitchen.

He was a little surprised to only see Parrish hunched over Gansey’s desk, when he remembered him arriving with Sargent. Gansey didn’t have a room for himself other than their living room/hallway, they couldn’t have vanished to anywhere else. Ronan didn’t like Gansey leaving without telling him. Maybe he had, he thought, but through the door and his music, Ronan hadn’t heard it. And why did they leave Parrish behind? Didn’t he have a home that he could fuck off to when Gansey wasn’t here?

With a successfully hunted bag of chips in one hand and an open bottle of beer in his other, he went back to his room, his eyes again trailing over to where the intruder sat. Ronan picked up the faint smell of gasoline that Adam couldn’t seem to wash off on days where he worked at Boyd’s, but then again it could be his imagination, because it was the first smell he associated with the boy. It was irritatingly pleasant.

Aiming it at no one in particular, doing it just for himself, he rolled his eyes when he detoured on his way back to his room and slapped the back of Adam’s head to get his attention. The reaction was a little more violent than Ronan had estimated.

Adam spun around quicker than anyone Ronan had ever seen and with a wild fear on his face, he suddenly stood as far away from Ronan as he could without running. His whole body had tensed up and spoke of defense, when Ronan’s slap hadn’t even been hard. Even when he hadn’t been aware of Ronan’s presence prior to the short contact, this was a total overreaction. Adam’s chest rose and fell quickly, he lowered his gaze like a subordinate dog, before he looked away, giving Ronan a pretty good look at his bobbing adam’s apple when he swallowed hard. Ronan gripped the bag a little tighter. There was wrinkling of Adam’s freckled nose and his gaze fell on the bottle in Ronan’s hand, before he finally lifted it at Ronan’s face again.

The fear wasn’t gone, but it was controlled. There was anger now. Instinctive anger and Ronan braced himself for being hit, at least shoved back. He knew that it would be how he himself would react.

Adam didn’t. He looked violent, but only grabbed his pencil, wrote down “ _What?!_ ” and stared back up at Ronan. Ronan looked around, hoping for some kind of gesture he could use to ask about Gansey, but he didn’t find one, so he grabbed the pencil from Adam’s hand. He saw a fading bruise sheepishly peeking out under Adam’s long sleeve. It was the first time he realized Adam wore long sleeves even though it was the middle of May. A warning light went off inside his head.

“ _Where’s Dick?_ ”, he wrote under Adam’s question. Adam looked around, obviously confused and Ronan wondered if they had left Adam behind when they left without saying anything. Like they had done with him.

Adam shrugged and pointed at the door, concluding Gansey had left way faster than Ronan had. Ronan leaned down again and wrote “ _And why are you still here?_ ” Adam gestured at his textbook. Yes, Ronan could see that he was doing his homework, but he didn’t understand why Adam did them **here**. Especially when Gansey was gone and Noah wasn’t around. He repeated his question in the form of an arched eyebrow. Adam shied from holding eyecontact, Ronan apparently had gotten to him. Good.

Instead of picking up the fight, Adam just started packing his things into his bag, he looked really uncomfortable. Ronan thought about telling him he could stay, he wouldn’t be bothered by him doing homework and being silently weird, when he was in his room, but he felt the need to show Adam that he didn’t belong here and wasn’t wanted as long as Gansey wasn’t around to welcome him. What irritated him more than having Adam around was that he never got him to explode. He could see anger boil under his skin from time to time, when he pushed too hard. He sometimes saw him sign angrily at Blue, when he got impatient with Ronan’s bullshit, but Noah claimed to not remember what it had been, when Ronan asked him afterwards. He just could not act like he cared what Adam had to say before the others, so he let it slide. The tension between them seemed to grow every time Adam joined them and Ronan wanted it to burst. He wanted to fight the boy, wanted him to explode, because sliding off of his carefully composed demeanor like a car on an oil-stained road felt too much like talking to Declan these days.

Adam still didn’t look at him when he stood up, his bag over one slim shoulder. Ronan pulled out one of the many papers on Gansey’s desk and wrote down “ _Too loud to study at home?_ ”. He crumbled the page into a ball and threw it at Adam’s head. The dusty boy flinched -harder, again, than Ronan had anticipated- and looked angrily back at Ronan. Ronan had imagined him making a distressed sound close to what he heard in his head, but it only served to make Parrish even harder to tolerate. He pointed to the ball of paper, Adam seemed to decide whether he wanted to be ordered around by Ronan or just leave. Reluctantly, he leaned down, something in his shoulder popped at the movement, Adam grimaced in a way that told Ronan it felt uncomfortable and he was used to it.

When Adam read the message, Ronan sneered. He could see the anger and the shame battling in Adam’s face and he was pleased to see the anger winning. Fucking finally!  
Adam let go of the paper in an attempt to sign at Ronan -a reflex, probably-, who just crossed his arms, looking as challenging as possible. He felt a strange satisfaction when Adam opened his mouth to say something, but closed it again in frustration before he picked up the paper and retrieved a pen from his jeans’ pocket. His hands shook with anger while he hastily wrote, using his free hand as the only support for the paper. He took three surprisingly firm strides that brought the two boys face to face. Ronan didn’t back down, when Adam shoved the crumbled paper against his chest, continuing to stare at him like he could kill with just his eyes.

Ronan took his sweet time reading what Adam had written, his handwriting looked so much more messed up than usually. “ _Fuck you! What do you even care? Don’t want me here? Fine! I’ll go! But stay out of my business!_ ”

“Huh…”, Ronan hummed. He enjoyed having Adam so worked up and to make it worse, to harvest the most of this rewarding tension, he leaned down and wrote his answer on Gansey’s desk. “ _Touched a nerve there?_ ” He left the paper on the desk, crossing his bare arms again and observing Adam like a snake would watch its prey. Adam pushed an annoyed breath out through his nose and leaned around Ronan to retrieve the paper without touching him. Suddenly he was shy of touch?

Adam clenched his teeth hard and tore the page in two halves. Ronan laughed a dirty laugh that he wished Adam could hear, because he wanted it to hit home, when Adam flipped him off and turned to leave. He was out the door only a few seconds before Gansey entered, looking back at Adam who apparently didn’t stop on his way down the stairs. Gansey looked inside, saw Ronan still grinning and let out a heavy sigh. Blue followed Gansey not much later, she was not as surprised to see Ronan as Gansey had been.

“What is wrong with you?!”, she accused more than that she asked and grabbed the nearest shoe to throw after him. Ronan caught it, let out a triumphant laugh and went back to his room.

 

***********

 

Noah never knocked. Ronan usually didn’t care about it, as long as it was Noah. From where he was spread on his bed, Ronan watched the pale boy enter his room and wander around undecidedly for a while. When Noah finally settled to fold his legs under himself on Ronan’s desk chair, kneeling on it the wrong way around and propping his chin up on the headrest, Ronan finally took off his headphones. “Sup?”

Noah spun a little in the chair so that he was facing the door. Ronan had a hard time remembering how they could not have noticed things like the seat not being pressed down under his non-existing weight, when he saw it from the side. Sometimes their friend was solid enough, but today he seemed more faded than usually. “Bluesey are fighting again.”

Ronan looked pained. “Can you please … not call ‘em that? It makes me wanna throw you out of the window.” Noah looked shocked, but Ronan took a moment to actually consider the idea. “Oh, don’t gimme that. It probably wouldn’t work anyway... Would it?”, he asked and Noah shrank a little behind the back of the chair, glowering at Ronan like a pouting kitten, before his eyes were drawn back to the door.

“Jealous of Parrish?”, Ronan asked and Noah turned his puzzled gaze to him again. “At least he doesn’t have to hear them.”, he explained. Noah huffed out a small laugh. The remark was almost good-natured, Ronan had grown to accept Adam around them, as much as he had accepted Blue as Gansey’s soulmate, as hard as it was on both of them sometimes. Their edges clashed against each other less and less, but they still fought and unlike Adam, who stood his ground for a reasonable time and then retreated, Blue always threw herself into a fight with teeth and claws out and ready. Ronan respected that about her the most and had built up some kind of familiar feelings for the short girl.

“A little, maybe.”, Noah admitted.

“Don’t know what’s worse… When they’re fighting or when they’re getting along.”, Ronan continued to joke, because apparently Noah wanted to talk about something and didn’t know how. Ronan wanted to help and listen, but also didn’t know how, which made the whole thing difficult at best and Ronan was set to keep making insulting jokes until Noah either left again or started talking.

Noah looked down. He was too nice to agree with Ronan about the latter, but was remarkably silent about the first option, too. Ronan sighed, he couldn’t continue joking when Noah didn’t react. “Spill it, man…”, he finally said.

For a moment, Ronan was sure Noah would just vanish and never talk about it again, when he didn’t move for a solid minute. He wasn’t about to rush him, he knew that talking even to your friends could be one of the hardest tasks. “Soulmates are tricky.”, Noah said, when he finally moved back to life. He had looked more alive seconds before, his movements didn’t seem voluntary and he looked like the wind was blowing his edge into fuzzy mist, even though there was absolutely no breeze in here.

“Hear hear…”, Ronan nodded, which reminded him of something he sometimes wondered, when the voice in his head was too much to think about. “Do you … still hear them? Your soulmate?”, he carefully asked. Noah wouldn’t be trying to talk to him about Ronan’s own soulmate-problem. Noah had always referred to Ronan’s soulmate as “him”, he knew more than Gansey, apparently. Noticed more, listened more closely, observed more carefully, maybe threw in some of his dead-spidey-senses, how Ronan had heard Noah refer to them once, when he had a hunch something bad was about to happen and he was afraid.

No. This was about Noah’s own soulmate, Ronan knew, especially since Noah made a face like he was seriously considering jumping out of the window on his own now instead of answering. If he didn’t want to talk about it, he shouldn’t be bringing topics like this up, so Ronan didn’t tell him that he didn’t have to talk about it. They had also shared far too many sleepless nights in the BMW, in Ronan’s room, in the unused groundfloor of Monmouth for a reassurance like this to be necessary.

Noah’s eyes were still fixed on the door, when he slowly nodded. “I don’t want to.” His voice sounded off, Ronan thought, like it echoed from a church-wall, even in his packed room. Far away, not caring that Noah didn’t sit as far away from Ronan as the latter was tall.

“Why not?”, Ronan didn’t ask. He felt a strange kind of idea in his stomach, weighing down heavy and cold. The way Noah watched the closed door like it was transparent, the way he usually was the first to disappear when Bluesey- ah, fuck it, now he used it, too- had a fight… It all blended together to an answer Ronan was scared to see and that he had unconsciously closed his eyes to until now.

Ronan shifted on the bed, Noah stayed frozen in time, space and thought. The faint sound of the fast electronical noise Ronan called music and that he had been listening to prior to this conversation still whispered from the headphones around his neck, Ronan ignored it, Noah didn’t seem to mind. For another few dying tics of the clock on Ronan’s wall, that desperately needed a new battery, Ronan was already sure that Noah was going to disappear. His edges became harder to look at, fuzzy, merging with the background in a way that simply couldn’t be real or possible, except it was. Ronan thought he could see the hole Chainsaw had pecked into his chair through Noah’s shoulder.

And then he was solid again. More solid. More present. “Because it’s her. It’s Blue’s voice.”, Noah said and Ronan thought back to when Gansey had first dragged Adam along to Nino’s. The day they first met Blue. Back to how Noah had looked at her from across the room, how he had hesitated before talking to her. Now, other moments came to his mind.

Noah that stared a little too long when Blue was full-on ranting over Gansey saying something very gansey. Noah whose hand seemed more solid, when it rested on the top of Blue’s head. Noah who barely talked when the little maggot was around to hear him.

It felt like finding out he was dead all over again. A heavy surprise that desperately didn’t want to be one and Ronan asked himself how he could have missed all of this. He liked to think of himself as observant. Good at seeing secrets, when he had so many on his own, but he had missed yet another one about his friend. Maybe Noah was just better at keeping them. Maybe his secrets died with him and unless he chose to reveal them, they couldn’t be seen even if he tried.

Ronan realized that he’d fallen silent. “Maggot? Really? Thought, at least _you_ ’d have a better taste than Dick.”, he decided to say. Noah looked up at him, a weak smile on his lips. It was hard to look at. Ronan carefully tried to evaluate if Noah wanted to keep on talking about this or if he should just drop it before he started to fade again. Noah usually kept a careful distance to questions about his current state of being, as if talking about it and finding a scientific approach might prove his impossibility and he would just disappear, bowing to the laws of physics. For once.

“Don’t expect me wearing any of his shit, though.”

“I didn’t. And I’m totally not picturing you doing it now. Nu-uh.”, Ronan half-lied. Noah chuckled. A knot in Ronan’s stomach loosened.

“Do you think I’d look better than him or worse?”

“I’m not going there, Noah. Don’t make me.”

Noah laughed.

 

**********

 

Ronan was just outside of Monmouth, he busied himself cleaning up the little mayhem that he and Noah had produced a few days back and that Gansey specifically wanted gone yesterday. He was afraid the larger chunks of metal and wood would attract unwanted attention by any form of authorities that Ronan would deal poorly enough with to get himself into trouble. Ronan strongly disagreed with his friend’s concerns, but complied anyway. There were better things to fight about and clearing the parking lot from this chaos left more room for the next one.

He looked up when he heard Adam’s catastrophe of a bike stop in a distance that he appreciated. Apparently Adam came from a shift at the garage, he still had grease on his shirt and wrist, his hair was messy from the bike ride and sweat. Ronan cleared his throat and threw a larger stick further than he needed to.

Adam struggled with his bike’s stand for a moment, then let out a frustrated sigh and carefully laid it on the ground, before he turned to Ronan. He pointed at the empty spot where the pig was supposed to be standing, a clear question mark on his face. Ronan shrugged. He guessed Gansey was at school, organizing to quit the rowing team and probably got lost in chatting with a teacher, but he wasn’t sure.

There was a hesitation in Adam’s face that looked familiar to Ronan. It looked like he felt about Declan and he was about to ask, when Adam already pulled out his notepad. They weren’t exactly friends, but Ronan had grown to enjoy Adam’s presence as much as Blue’s, even though they rarely talked. Maybe _because_ they didn’t…

Adam held his notes towards him. “ _Mind if I wait inside? Got homework.”_ , he had written. Sometimes, Ronan still wondered why Adam bothered coming here if he was only going to do his homework after all, but he still didn’t ask. Indifference had changed into not pushing borders the same way that trying to hurt or scare Adam away had changed into provocation that he knew Adam could keep up with.

Ronan was about to shrug it off when he noticed the grease on Adam’s wrist again. Except it wasn’t just dirt from work, there was a bruise underneath it that looked painful. It wasn’t the first black mark he saw Adam sport, but it was the first that didn’t look like the accident he usually claimed them to be. Ronan had already noticed how Adam claimed to be a lot clumsier than he prove to be around them but this? This looked familiar. This looked like a fight.

He pointed to it and raised his eyebrows in question. This time, Adam shrugged, before he pointed at his bike. Ronan crossed his arms over his chest. Adam looked down under his gaze, just to look right back up again. Now Ronan was sure, there was something more to it. Adam did an impressive mute impersonation of Blue’s “What?!”-face, when Gansey pointed out something about her that unintentionally put himself on the educational highground.

Ronan grabbed the notepad and Adam handed him the pen so he could write _“Did s.o. hurt you?”_ under Adam’s question. Adam sighed defensively and shook his head, before claiming his belongings back and heading for the factory.

“Sure…”, he mumbled and wished Adam could hear it so it would start a fight. He didn’t like the way Adam just turned his back and walked away from this, he wanted the situation resolved. On the other hand, he felt like this was one of Adam’s well-kept secrets and who was he to urge him to reveal it? Even when he got hurt, so Ronan had learned, Adam was always protecting his secrets as well as his pride. It was stupid and repelling, but it made him oh so challenging.

There was something in the tension in Adam’s set shoulders that made Ronan long for … something. In the careful way he sometimes moved as if he were about to pull a muscle or break a bone. In the defensive touch of his own wrist to shield the suspicious injury from Ronan. It made Ronan irritatingly protective, but he was aware of the fact that it was the last thing Adam wanted. That much, he had made clear time and time again.

Maybe there was something he could do about the tension, though. It was something he’d wanted to try anyways and it would be a nice distraction for the both of them. He caught up to Adam and softly slapped him on the arm to get his attention. Adam spun around, an angry glimmer in his eyes, but Ronan just held out his hand and curled his fingers repeatedly to get Adam to give him the notepad. He complied and Ronan scribbled “ _You know how to drive?”_ under his last question.

It seemed to take Adam by surprise, the angry lines on his face softened and Ronan could practically see him thinking and trying to figure out where this is going.

“ _I have to drive some of our costumer’s cars around at the garage. Why?”_ , he wrote down and handed the notepad back over. Talking to Adam was always so slow when Noah wasn’t around to translate…

He gestured for Adam to follow him back into the parking lot and pulled the keys to his BMW from his pocket. With a flash of the indicators the car unlocked itself and Ronan threw the key towards Adam who caught it with an even bigger confusion on his face. Ronan pointed towards the front seat and watched how Adam hesitantly opened the driver’s side door, before he went to collect the rope he had been using to move some of the bigger chunks of trash, as well as the moving dolly that he had to rid of some heavy metal chunks first. He kicked the dolly towards the BMW and detangled the rope just so he could tie a sling that he could attach to his car. With the dolly in place, he looked over to Adam. Apparently, he had understood what Ronan had planned and after he looked from Ronan to the dolly and back, he raised an eyebrow in a silent question. Ronan shrugged and threw him a smirk before he sat down on the dolly and grabbed the rope. He could see Adam adjust the rearview-mirror until his eyes appeared and he lifted one hand, his thumb pointing towards the sky, and even though he shook his head as if he couldn’t believe what he was about to do, Adam started the car.

It took longer than Ronan had the patience for until the car made a small jump and howled in agony when Adam failed to shift gears correctly. The rope -and with it Ronan on the dolly- was pulled a few feet, then the car howled again, then it died.

“The fuck?”, Ronan mumbled and stood up to look inside. Adam ran a finger through his dusty hair and -as an answer to Ronan’s inquiring stare- pointed vaguely at the gearshift. Apparently, he mostly reparked automatic cars at his workplace. Great.

Ronan gestured for him to get out and on the dolly. They could just as easily switch positions and it would still be fun, he guessed. Adam took Ronan’s place on the dolly and picked up the rope, while Ronan smoothly slid into the driver’s seat. He did check in the rearviewmirror, but didn’t wait for Adam to give his okay. He looked prepared, that had to be enough. The car purred back to life and Ronan nudged the gas just hard enough to get some speed, not hard enough to pull Adam from the dolly.

In the mirror, he saw how Adam tried to balance and steer the dolly, but he didn’t seem to have any impact on where he was drifting. He was delighted to discover a new kind of concentration on Adam’s gaunt face. A more active one, a less controlled one. Ronan took a turn and Adam lost the last bit of control over his makeshift vehicle. Right before he crashed into his bike, he pushed himself off and the dolly away from his precious possession.

Ronan stopped the car, rolled down a window and stuck his head out to look at Adam. He was rubbing his elbow, but seemed okay. There was a wild grin on his face that suited him better than the frown from a few minutes ago. He collected the dolly and positioned it back behind the car, where Ronan could only see it through the mirror. Once the boy sat down, Ronan drove off again. A little faster this time, hardly slowing down to take his next turn.

It threw Adam off the dolly by accident this time. Ronan stopped the car and heard the empty dolly bounce against one of the tires. Adam had barrelrolled into the bushes that were slowly taking back the abandoned parking lot from its seams. When Ronan stuck his head out again, he was faced with Adam, pushing himself up, pulling leaves out of his hair and a little twig out of his shoelaces.

And he was laughing.

Sometimes, Ronan noticed things about Noah and started questioning if he had ever seen him do it before. If he had missed it. It happened with Blue, too. And with Adam. It didn’t happen with Gansey, they’d known each other for too long now. They were moments when Noah didn’t close a door, but it was shut the next time Ronan looked. Moments when Blue found a small hole in her clothes and just picked at it until it looked like it was there on purpose. When Adam touched a spot close to his left ear, when he tried to focus after a long shift.  
Those things just happened so casually, that Ronan wasn’t sure if he had witnessed them for the first time or had just not taken the time to actually notice.

This was different. The second he heard it, he knew he had never, not once since they met, heard Adam laugh like this. Freely. Carelessly.

Wonderfully.

He would have noticed. Even when he couldn’t stand Adam, he would have recognized this voice anywhere. Immediately.

A warm laughter, deliberate, like it escaped like the held breath of a resurfacing diver…

The laughter of his soulmate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for waiting.  
> I know I wanted to keep this short, but then, things happened and I had feelings and now it'll be more to come. Steadily, I hope. Getting myself to be creative is super hard right now and has been for a while. But I started doing things again. I actually did and I hope I can keep it up, because I have a lot of ideas! I just lack the strength to get them out of my head and out into the world.  
> So thank you, everyone, for your patience and the overwhelmingly positive feedback on the first chapter. Thank you, for bearing with me, thank you for supporting me.
> 
> Fun fact: For a Pynch-video, a friend and I did the dolly-thing. Steering isn't possible, but it was great fun, I took a lot of inspiration from this.
> 
> I said this before, but like to remind you: I'm trying to handle Adam being deaf as good as I can and don't mean to offend anyone with it. If any of you have personal experience to share about it and things I can improve, it's well appreciated.
> 
> Feel free to talk to me on Twitter (@FuyuHangetsu) or tumblr (dreamforestsmagician) <3

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to talk to me on Twitter (@FuyuHangetsu) or tumblr (dreamforestsmagician) <3


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